AN HONEST AND MODERN WIDOW© Viola Ashford
Jun 7, 2003
AN HONEST AND MODERN WIDOW
Katherine Parr, in love with the dashing Thomas Seymour, was terrified of becoming the King's last wife. She feared that she might suffer the fate of Anne Boleyn or the naive Catherine Howard - a dreadful death. However, she could hardly refuse to marry the all-powerful Henry and she regarded it as her duty to her country to become Queen. If Henry had chosen her then it must be God's will.
Still young - she was thirty - and beautiful, Katherine had been married twice before to much older men. Her father had arranged mercenary marriages for her that enabled him to repay his debts. The first marriage was to Edward, Lord Borough of Gainsborough when she was just 14. Widowed before she was 18 she then married John Neville, Lord Latimer. While she was supposed to be mourning him she fell in love with Thomas and delayed the marriage until the mourning period was over.
The King thought that she was 'an honest and modern widow', much more sensible and stable than some of the young, flighty, capricious women that he often used to fall in love with. He also thought that she was submissive and that he would be able to order her about.
They were married at Hampton Court in June of 1543. Anne of Cleves cattily remarked that Katherine would hardly enjoy going to bed with the much older, grossly fat and sickly King: "A fine burden Madame has taken on herself".
Sweet natured, Katherine reconciled Henry to his daughters Mary and Elizabeth and restored the right of succession. She became a surrogate mother to them and also became the guardian of Lady Jane Grey.
The crisis in the marriage came when Katherine, who was inclined toward Lutheran beliefs and liked to hold classes in them, was accused of heresy. Bishop Gardiner burned heretics who did not believe in the Six Articles, one of which was the doctrine of transubstantiation, and he grew suspicious of the Queen. He personally investigated Katherine and her Ladies in Waiting, torturing Anne Askew in order to get her to betray the Queen. Bravely she refused. The Bishop wanted the King to remove Katherine to the Tower.
Henry, who was a conservative Catholic in many ways, grew tired of the Queen's
trying to convert him to what he saw as radical Protestantism. He had her rooms searched and agreed to remove her to the tower if she was found guilty of heresy.
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